Thursday, November 01, 2007

Braxton's Lear - Blessed Are The Chic

StandFirm yesterday linked to this rollicking piece on the downfall of evangelicals, the Right, the Republican Party, and people who go to Applebee's on Mother's Day.

Even in Kansas, the right-wing so-called Christians are falling into disarray. The old religious right leaders like Falwell and Kennedy are dead.

And it's a judgment on them! You see what happens when you put yourself on the wrong side of progress? You get old and you die! It's a special fate only reserved for the benighted.

Terry Fox, one of the most powerful preachers in the Southern Baptist Convention, finally got asked to leave his church after people hung their heads and muttered, “Oh no, there he goes again, 52 straight weeks about abortion.”

The guy’s now preaching in a lonesome Best Western.

A Psalm of Josh

O Lord, why do you afflict me?Why do you send so-called "prophets" like NathanTo harsh my mellow when I'm getting jiggy?Lo, he doth flap his gums from everlasting to everlastingAnd is a very buzzkill.The Lord hath seen my carbon footprint and rejoiced;The Lord hath struck down the Republicans in the wall-to-wall carpet of their chain hotels;And I will dwell amid polished hardwood and stained-glass windows and bitchin silk and metallic thread on unbleached linen vestments all the days of my life.

Rudolph Giuliani, the apparent Republican front-runner for president in an extremely weak field, has been known to wear dresses and camp it up; after his then-wife threw him out of Gracie Mansion, the New York mayor’s official residence, he took up with a Gay couple and lived with them for a few months.

He's also been known to publicly keep a mistress, but who cares about that? "He took up with a Gay couple"! (Interesting capitalization; I guess "Gay" is a nationality now.) Most of us would say, "After his wife threw him out, he moved in with friends," But I guess it's different if your friends are homosexual. Then, you don't turn to them for sympathy and a welcoming place to live instead of going to an anonymous hotel. You "take up with them".

It's odd that I'm so familiar with Rudy Giuliani's personal life, since I don't even live in New York. But I read all this stuff while it was happening because I was following another little story that was going on at the same time - something called 9/11. But at least Josh has HIS priorities straight (no pun intended) and remembers the important stuff.

If he wins the GOP nomination, the religious right will never have been less relevant.

He's counting on your vote, Josh.

The Times article notes that evangelicals split with mainline Protestants a hundred years ago over that awful evolution.

And NOW they're paying for it! Who says we liberal Protestants don't believe in original sin?

Meanwhile the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion go through incredible contortions trying to figure out how to appease homophobic bigots and Gay people—first one group, then the other. It’s pointless.

It's so nice the way Nature neatly divides humanity into two groups - "Gay people" and "homophobic bigots". So much easier to keep track that way. That's Evolution at work right there - everything evolves into simpler and simpler life forms.

We don’t take that gorgeous Hebrew meditation (Genesis 1) on God as Creator and the supremacy of the weekly Sabbath—the finest PowerPoint ever written—as if it were somehow a scientific statement. It was never intended that way—and the writer would laugh at people who think God can be confined to ink-smudges on paper.

That's because we're the REAL Original Intent people! We go right back to what the author intended. Except when it comes to Bible passages regarding homosexuality - then those Stone Age, pre-science morons just have to be ignored.

Episcopalians know God as the pulsing, breathing, intimate and personal life-force epitomized in the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

6 Comments:

I can't believe he reduced Genesis 1 to "the finest PowerPoint ever written," no doubt thinking he was demonstrating... I don't even know what to call it... some open-minded approach or other. I'm pro-Darwin all the way and I'd never dream of describing Genesis in such terms. For starters I loathe PowerPoint; it's merely a method of disseminating useless information to passive audiences via pretty pictures. Way to trivialize the story of Creation there, dude. The sad thing is I'm sure he thinks he's being complimentary.

Yeah, you're right Mrs. F. - I didn't phrase that first sentence quite correctly. The link goes directly to the piece itself, but I meant to give credit to StandFirm for unearthing it first, since I never would have read it if they hadn't linked it on their site. Probably would have been better just to put an acknowledgment to SF at the end.

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I'm a married lady with 3 kids, all at different spots on the autism spectrum. In my spare time I translate and create English subtitles for obscure French movies. I also bake, garden and build computers.